sometimes helpless, and so overawed as to be afraid to testify against the gang in a court of justice. Police protection is intermittent and culpably inefficient, and crimes against person and property are perpetrated with impunity.

Worse than all, the fountain-head of justice is sometimes submissive to "the gang," and roughs arrested are discharged because they stand well" with "the boss," usually a saloon-keeper. The overmuch politics with which this country is cursed, and the constantly recurring elections, place the administration of law at the mercy of the ruffianly elements, and ward politics becomes a trade, in which robbery and lawlessness are connived at. Gang-rule prevails wherever ward politicians bid the police stand aside, and force, the police-justice to utter decisions in the interest of disorder.

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking on the "Menaces of Civilization" before the Congregational Club of New York City, said: "In any attempt to reform them by law, would we not find ninetenths of the city members in the Legislature hostile? The only hope of reform lies in the action of the country members. The average grade of our city politicians is a serious menace to good government. Four-fifths of the representatives at Albany, of New York and Brooklyn, can be depended upon to vote on the wrong side of every question." This, said a leading New York editor, from an observation of twenty years, we believe to be true.

Even the registration lists in these cities, under the manipulation of the gangs, are falsified. Last spring it was said that "not less than 20,000 citizens of St. Louis failed to register" for an important city election, among whom were a large number of persons of "the best moral standing and intelligence, whose business activity contributes largely to the prosperity of the city." On the other hand, the vilest and most vicious elements, we are told, “had their names on the lists and appeared in full force at the polls. The ward politicians gathered them out of all the vile resorts of the city, and used them for their own purposes, regardless of the public welfare."

The St. Louis papers moralized over the degeneracy of the city politics, and put the responsibility upon "the good men who do not vote." But many of the best citizens replied that "for years the registration lists have been the chief instrument used by the worst elements for their fraudulent purposes"; that "the registry

of voters has not afforded the slightest protection against fraudulent voting; that there has not been an honest election in this city for years;" that hotel registers have been transferred to the voting lists, and men have been found to vote upon the names; that the ballot-boxes are often in the hands of men whose Satanic mathematics will produce any kind of election result desired; and that such things are carried on with the connivance of the party in power-and why, therefore, should good men trouble themselves in the vain effort of making an honest ballot overbalance fraudulent returns?

Baltimore has been of late conspicuously referred to as another typical example of a city given over to the misrule of unscrupulous demagogues and corruptionists; ably supported by the criminal classes. Of the judges appointed to supervise a recent municipal election, an authority says, one has been indicted and convicted of crime; another has been indicted, convicted, sent to jail and pardoned; one has been indicted for assault with intent to kill, the sheriff becoming his bail-the case was not pressed; another had been indicted nine times in four years; another, eight times in two years; another had served in jail sıx months; another, had been indicted for assault with intent to kill; another had been convicted of an infamous crime, etc., etc.

With such a set of "thugs" installed as election judges, how farcical must be the elections! Primary meetings are packed, nominations controlled, elections dictated, and ballots counted to suit. Similar facts are given concerning Cincinnati, Chicago, Albany, the North End of Boston, etc., etc.

V. PERIL FROM A WIDENING GULF BETWEEN LARGE MASSES AND THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES.

The Papal elements of course stand aloof from our churches, and can be won only with great care and wise, persevering efforts. The large rationalistic and radical socialistic elements which come to out cities settle themselves on the other side of the chasm. The lower vicious elements belong there, by moral gravitation. Our agnostics, native and foreign, have nothing in common with us. But there is a large middle class, many of whom were reared amid the associations of church life in the country, and others once associated with city churches, who have turned away from the sanctuary. Good observers say the breach is widening, especially

in the great cities, and in some sections in the country also, and there are sad signs that in too many places the Church of Christ is getting farther from large masses of the people, instead of

nearer.

It is said that the erection of so many costly, magnificent churches, to meet the desires of wealthy, aristocratic families, has conveyed the impression of caste, to less favored people, has increased the cost of church attendance, and has put many families in a position of so great social disparity, that they have felt ill at ease, have withdrawn from the sanctuary, and fallen away from public worship altogether. There have been many complaints of churches of "the few elect, select people;" of churches managed on "the high plane of financial and aristocratic exclusiveness;" of expensive churches, which screw out of the people pew assessments and pew rents, and drive them away from the sanctuary; of churches which have ceased to imitate the great Master who "ate with publicans and sinners," and "went about doing good."

The Sunday newspaper has been an evil factor, and modern skepticism and doctrinal revulsion have had something to do in producing this condition. Large masses, very many of them native population, go upon Sunday excursions instead of attending worship. Many Protestant congregations are small, with large unoccupied spaces in the auditorium. Statistics of non-attendance are freely quoted in newspapers, conferences and assemblies. And though much of the talk is mere pessimistic raving, yet there are genuine facts enough to indicate that there is a great duty to be performed to a large mass of worship-neglecters, and to set us to seriously inquire, How can the bans of union between the Church and the non-worshippers be effected?

VI. PERILS FROM ELEMENTS HETEROGENEOUS AND LARGELY DEFIANTLY HOSTILE.

A citizenship unassimilated into the national, moral and religious life of any people is a peril. We are unable to produce from the pages of history an example of a nation so greatly exposed to peril at this point as our own; and the sources of this peril are concentrating in the large cities more than anywhere else.

If the new additions to our city population were homogeneous in race and general ideas, the case would be more tolerable. How different is London, with only 1.6 per cent. of its immense popu

lation born outside of the British Isles! How much easier there the work of reform, philanthropy and evangelization than in the heterogeneous populations of our American cities! In our urban centres we find every conceivable nationality, as well as all shades of religion, the darker shadows of no religion, and many owning supreme allegiance to a foreign Pontiff. The tables of the United States Census, showing the foreign-born population of the "Fifty Principal Cities," show that there are in them people from—

What more striking exhibit of the wide distribution of the most diverse elements in our large cities! What a polyglot population! The natives of fourteen of the localities are in every one of the fifty principal cities; those of fifteen other localities are in between forty and fifty of the cities, and the natives of only five localities are in less than half of the fifty cities.

The foreign-born population of these fifty cities was, in 1850, 37.1 per cent. of their total population; in 1860, 38.3 per cent.; in 1870, 34.1 per cent.; in 1880, 29.8 per cent., or 8.5 per cent. less than in 1860. This small relative decline in the percentage of the foreign-born to the whole population of these cities, should be considered in connection with the large mass of those essentially foreign, being foreign in the second or third degree.

Those, one or both of whose parents are foreign born, sustain

the closest relations to foreign customs and ideas. The United States Census for 1880 gave the number of this latter class for the whole country; but only for the city of New York, as a separate locality. In that city 39 per cent. of the whole number of inhabitants were foreign born; adding the other class, we have 80.1 per cent. either foreign born, or one or both of whose parents were foreign born. The Census of Massachusetts, taken in 1885, gives these two classes, in Boston, at 67 per cent. ; in Lawrence, 77.4 per cent.; in Fall River, 81.3 per cent.; in Holyoke, 82.7 per cent., and in sixty-five towns and cities in Massachusetts, at 65.1 per

cent.

The foreign elements in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and some other cities will probably rank nearly or quite with New York City, both classes combined being about double the number of those actually born in foreign lands; and in most other large cities about 80 per cent. more than those foreign in the first degree. Taking the whole fifty cities, probably it will be safe to say that at least 54 per cent. of their inhabitants are of the first and second degree foreign, which gives us a foreign element of 4,194,617 in the "Fifty Principal Cities." If these cities had no larger foreign element relatively than the city of London there would be only 225,000 persons in all of them of the first two degrees foreign, or about one-nineteenth as many as we now have.

How diverse the civilizations, the religious ideas, the social customs, the culture and no-culture of our new-comers! Among them are some, a goodly number, whom we are glad to recognize, welcome and honor, as desirable additions to our citizenship. With liberal allowance for such, nevertheless, it will not be denied that, as a whole, these heterogeneous masses, with habits, sympathies, political and religious predilections, so unlike and positively antagonistic to those of our native population, have weighed heavily against us. Coming in large crowds, pouring into the principal cities often as new and distinct nationalities, keeping up " Old World" customs, introducing their crude and sometimes revolutionary opinions into our elections, massing their forces, and effectively controlling them, they have set aside the American Sabbath, opened Sunday theatres, beer gardens, infidel clubs, communistic societies. and anarchistic leagues, inaugurating mobocracy, and copiously filling up the ranks of the social outcasts.

In these facts lie the most serious perils of the cities. How